Rain. Wet, soothing rain. Kyra could feel the drops on her hands, her face, dripping from her nose, falling from her eyelashes. She brushed her blonde hair from her face for the umpteenth time that day. Sighing, she pulled her map out of her backpack. As for everything that went wrong in her life, she blamed her parents for the position she was in. They had tried to talk her into this but, when that didn’t work, they applied for her. Being one of those things you couldn’t back out of, she would have to wait 2 years before she would be 18 and her parents would have no ownership over her so they wouldn’t be able to do something like that. The activity she as going through was like a survival challenge. Everyone her age had to do it, although you could do it later in the year. Kyra had been putting it off, because she didn’t want to show off the skills she had learnt from her grandfather. If there was one thing she had learnt from the student body at school, it’s that you don’t draw attention to yourself. Luckily, Kyra found out that everyone gets dropped off at different places in the forest, so no-one would see her. In the challenge you had to survive, thrive, and make your way back to civilization with five items you are allowed to choose and the stuff you find in the forest. Kyra chose to take a canteen full of water, a knife she inherited from her grandfather, a special kind of bread, called Karaman Bread that fills you up with one nibble, a full box of matches, and a warm sleeping bag. On the first day she had climbed a tree with a slab of bark she had ripped off and, as accurately as she could, had carved a map into the bark with her knife, showing the position of the streams and hills. Since then she had been making her way North-East, towards her home, judging by the position of a moss that grows on the south-side of a tree. She was now, three days into the challenge and the deadline is 10 days, which is when they track you down, and they pull you out of the forest. Kyra looked up as the Elenat Star entered the night sky. She always found a place to sleep when the brightest star enters the sky. She found herself a climbable tree and climbed to a branch in the middle of the tree. Then she climbed into her sleeping bag and secured herself to the branch with a vine she had found a few miles back. Two more days, she thought. Two more days until I can once again see the peaks of Cananbert City . As she drifted off to sleep, she thought she heard someone call her name.
